RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained

Magorak writes "USA Today is reporting the RIAA now claims that the issues surrounding P2P and piracy have been contained and are no longer as big an issue as they once were. From the article; 'The problem has not been eliminated,' says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. 'But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.'"

Comments

Phew...

[jbirdkerr]

Looks like Grandma and her illegal downloads of the "Happy Birthday" song can rest easy once again.

In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mission accomplished!

Re:In other words...

[IPFreely]

Declare victory and go home.

(I hope they don't forget the "go home" part this time.)

Yarrrr Matey!

[spahn]

We won!

that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[LM741N]

I can still get on Gnutella and find almost every song that exists. What a bunch of nonsense. I believe they are just saying this so they can save face in the midst of their defeat.

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[richieb]

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Don't tell them! Let them declare victory and leave....

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[moranar]

To be "fair", what they seem to be saying is that even though every existing song can be found on p2p, the money they're making is still increasing while p2p downloads aren't.

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[gstoddart]

I can still get on Gnutella and find almost every song that exists. What a bunch of nonsense. I believe they are just saying this so they can save face in the midst of their defeat.

Or, they're trying to use it as a tactic to convince people that everybody else has given up on using p2p, and they're better off switching to the 'legit' ways of doing it.

Sometimes, trying to affect people's perceptions is as effective as trying to affect their actions.

Everything the *AA's says is all about spin and perception!

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[cp.tar]

Wait... is RIAA French?

/me ducks

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[griffjon]

Quiet! My remote Jedi Mind Trick finally worked!

"These are not the nodes you're looking for"

Re:that is ridiculous- e.g. Gnutella

[Skreems]

So basically, they finally realized what the OSS/P2P/Hippie/Thief community (yeah yeah, flame on) has been saying for years: that "illegal" downloads are not actually depriving them of any money, since people use it to test out bands they're unsure of, or discover new music, as often as they just download without paying? But even though the rest of us have been trying to stuff this idea into their tiny little skulls, they have to declare moral victory so they don't lose face?

If you cannot win...

[HRogge]

If you cannot win, claim victory.

Meanwhile...

[Lithgon]

Pirate 1: Arrr! The RIAA ship has been swashbuckled! Pirate 2: Ayye! The fools even think they sunk us! ARRR!

RIAA says its contained?

[LDMackSAE]

Isn't that like a /.er's parent saying "My child doesn't spend that much time on the computer"?

Not flat

[Himring]

file-trading is flat.

I actually think of it more as a rectangular prism....

Re:Not flat

[duggie]

file-trading is flat.

I actually think of it more as a rectangular prism....

And if the RIAA had its way it would be a rectangular prison.

was the guy...

[Churla]

Was the guy who made this press release doing so on the deck of a ship with a big "Mission accomplished" sign behind him?

Any chance there?

If you were the RIAA...

[Douglas Simmons]

What would you do?

Seriously...

Re:If you were the RIAA...

[tbmcmullen]

Shoot myself in the face sixteen times for the betterment of society as a whole.

Seriously...

Re:If you were the RIAA...

[happyemoticon]

The perception that the *AA is going away is somewhat flawed. Sure, like many companies in the past, they are hanging onto outmoded business models and many individual companies are doomed to shrink. But the 800 lb gorillas of the past, such as IBM and Xerox, didn't go away - they just reinvented themselves and shrank somewhat, while other companies took innovations that the gorillas were too thick to see as viable and ran with them.

To say that their entire business is going to disappear is to overlook the fact that most people like the music that they sell, and like buying their albums. Sure, I have friends who can record songs that sound as good as any studio-polished single in their bedrooms on commodity equipment. Certainly, I watched Star Wreck: The Pirkinning, and I know that fan films can be made at a fraction of the cost of a real motion picture, with more thigh-high boots and miniskirts, and still look great. But if you indulge in these things, it means you're an avant-garde free content nerd, and you are in the minority. I know exactly how out-of touch I am, because I'm looking at last year's top 50 and I don't have a clue what 95% of them are. But clearly somebody's buying them, and I suspect that these people would be more than happy to download portions of these songs as ringtones onto their Verizon mobile phone. Whole droves of teenagers are listening to something with the nonce-words "Numa, Numa" in it, and buying it on ITMS as well.

Imagine that. I'm 23 this Thursday, I have about five computers, I write for a living, play the guitar, have a reasonably active social life, and I feel like both a luddite and a hermit. I'm two steps away from Abe Simpson. Is this what all of adulthood is like?

Anyway, what is going to contract is the retail distribution channels, such as movie theaters and music stores. The cable companies and the telcos will pick up the slack like I've hinted at above. However, since the content owners still have the majority of the market and you still have to do business with them to have a prayer of making it anyway, they will continue to snatch up new artists and buy their souls.

Nice to see wrong statistics propagated

[jhill]

Would appear that the writer of the story does what writers do best, not research facts. Appears that they're still using the same old sorry BS of CD sales dropped 30% in whatever year it was. When in fact, what has been shown is that it was singles that dropped ( you know, the things you can't find any more, because people aren't willing to pay 5 dollars for 1 song on a CD ), during that year CD sales actually increased.

Overall the article is rather blah, I'm sort of surprised that they didn't throw in there something about the lose of some umpteen billion dollars that they would have made if it weren't for illegal file sharing...the good myth of each download is a lost sale.

Re:Nice to see wrong statistics propagated

[ZombieWomble]

Heck, if you think that statistic is bad, look at this one:

"Nearly 10 million people are online, swapping media, at any given time," he says. That May figure is up from 8.7 million people in 2005, he says.

Apparently a 15% growth rate per year is what the music industry calls 'contained'. I wish someone would come and 'contain' my savings account...

/. has been hacked

[kfstark]

A story about Microsoft calling a truce with the GPL followed by the RIAA saying P2P is not a problem.

It's not April 1st.

Hmmm... Only logical explanation is that /. has been hacked and someone is posting bogus stories.

--Keith

Re:/. has been hacked

[JavaTHut]

> It's not April 1st.
>
> Hmmm... Only logical explanation is that /. has been hacked and someone is posting bogus stories.

We'll find out soon enough ... if we see this same story appear five times before week's end, we'll know only the real slashdot editors could acomplish that.

It's completely and utterly true

[Toby The Economist]

It's true - because everyone who is going to do P2P download is now doing it.

So he is right; P2P growth is flat - in exactly the same way TV purchase growth is flat.

Note any shortage of TVs around the first world? alas not...

Re:It's completely and utterly true

[Toby The Economist]

In fact, thinking about it, what I find interesting is the implied equivelence of legal and illegal downloads.

There appears to exist in the RIAA mind the notion that if legal downloads rise, illegal downloads must fall.

I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*.

Naturally, if you imagine the two are precisely correlated, if you see that the rate of illegal download growth has leveled out, you might - if you wanted to imagine it were so - consider that the problem had been "contained", especially since the number of legal downloads is rising (naturally, since it began recently at zero).

In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out.

The RIAA just doesn't get it, it seems.

Of course, we have to consider how the RIAA are measuring numbers - absolutely nothing is said about this. Are they still fixated on the now-defunct Kazaa network? looking on eMule right now, there appear to be approximately 19 (nineteen) million concurrent users. On one P2P network, just at this moment. In the evenings UK time it's about 26 (twenty-six) million.

It's quite likely their measuring method is deliberately deceptive, in which case the statement means even less that it does.

Re:First Contained Post

[WilliamSChips]

Apparently your grammar has been "contained" as well.

Snrk

[American AC in Paris]

But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business

...yeah, after Apple dragged your sorry asses kicking and screaming into the digital age. After you tried everything in your power to make digital downloads as locked down, expensive, and all but impossible to effectively implement.

Digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business despite your lot's best efforts to screw it all up.

Re:Snrk

[linefeed0]

You mean Apple's digital downloads aren't also locked down, too expensive (and jeezus, $2 for a single music video or SNL skit?!), and a pain in the ass for everyone involved? That's news to me!

Good: we want them to think they have won

[KWTm]

You know what? Maybe they have won, if student pirating has been curbed to the extent that they want. And if more digital downloads are legal now than before, then that's great. It probably means that more companies are getting a clue about how to take advantage of the business model, but we'll let the RIAA save face.

All we want them to do is quit trying to stomp out every conceivable method of information transfer in the name of stopping piracy, and go back to their executive boardrooms and golf courses.

Re:Good: we want them to think they have won

[flibuste]

No, they would have won if former users of P2P were now downloading songs from paying sites, which is probably not the case. Have all the people willing to "illegaly" (meaning "against MAFIAA rules") download music moved to ITunes or such? I doubt it. What we'll see is an upcoming huge drop in CD sales in favor of downloaded music, but will the gross income increase? I am not sure.

They're losing the battle they started. Just as in project management, to keep face when a project is majorly failing, declare a success mid-course then terminate the project before big money gets lost.

Re:Translated from "Suitese"...

[Fordiman]

Dude, I don't actually care. If they're trying to convince the public that filesharing is no longer a threat to them... HOORAY! I can share without guilt or fear of reprisal!

Re:i tried really

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried hard to come up with a serious comment to this article, I really did. But every time I started writing one, I starting giggling

And yet, you clicked the 'Submit' button anyway. I think this sums up 90% of the comments on Slashdot.

Re:i tried really

[KU_Fletch]

Well, if you can't really achieve victory, just change the goalposts to something easier and calim you won.

It's a trick. Get an axe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they've won. They've got the "get rid of allofmp3.com" as one of the requirements for Russia to join the WTO, and they've got Sweden raiding (apparently against Swedish law) ThePirateBay just because the U.S. asked! Seriously, this isn't about P2P. This is about controlling distribution channels. You don't go after BitTorrent because you people are using it to pirate your copyrighted material. You go after the people distributing the copies. (Just like you don't go after Ford because people use cars to move drugs around the country. On the other hand, if you are a cartel of taxi drivers, removing private cars from the road is a great way to guaranteed revenues.) They only way I'll believe this is the end of it is if I see sales figures for RIAA members dropping drastically (and then they'd just blame pirates...).

Re:First Contained Post

[cHiphead]

Everyone SHUT THE HELL UP and let them believe it is contained. SHHHHH. Seriously.

Cheers.

Good Project Managers are always successful

[vinn01]

if you can't really achieve victory, just change the goalposts to something easier and calim you won.

I used to have a Project Manager who did that for his trainwreck projects. His projects were *always* successful. Unfinished requirements became "future enhancements". Non-working projects became "proof of concepts". Half-baked projects became "prototypes".

The wonderful thing about project schedules and requirements is nobody saves the previous version.

Nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of upper-managers.

And nobody has ever underestimated the gullibility of people who read industry press releases.

Kind of like this...

[geobeck]

TMS - Typical Movie Scientist
TMG - Typical Movie General

TMG: Doc, what's the status of the plague?
TMS: As of an hour ago, the virus has infected every living thing on Earth.
TMG: But it hasn't spread since then?
TMS: Well, no, but--
TMG: Then it's been contained! Victory is ours!

Yes, they do have to do it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

But even though the rest of us have been trying to stuff this idea into their tiny little skulls, they have to declare moral victory so they don't lose face?

Yes, they do.

Their company exists to protect the interests of their member copyright holders against widespread unauthorized copying.

Up to now their members/customers/owners have been interpreting the "internet piracy" as lost sales - or at least more sales lost than sales gained by free advertising, etc. - and they didn't have a download business model.

In this atmosphere, if they were to declare surrender, their members/customers/owners would just let them die - or replace their execs with new ones who would attempt to carry on the fight.

But now "this stuff" is beginning to percolate into the skulls of the RIAA's customers. And many of them do have a way to profit directly from authorized downloads (thanks to iTunes and the like). So it's now possible for both the RIAA and its clientele to look at things more rationally. They can entertain the possibility that unauthorized downloading, like pre-Betamax-decision videotaping of broadcasts, might not be an unmitigated disaster - and may even be a Good Thing (especially once the for-pay alternative is available for honest people who are more than browsing.)

So the RIAA can now back off its enforcement efforts and go back to more reasonable functions, such as hunting down mass-production pirates, collecting royalties from broadcasters and those creating commercial public performances, and so on.

But on their way out they still need to declare victory - not just to save their own tails, but to keep some pressure on downloaders to go to the commercial services and pay the 99 cents, and to keep in the public mind the idea that they SHOULD do so.

(Of course they can claim to their clientele (with some justification) that their efforts to date are what branded this concept into "the public mind" in the first place.)

Meanwhile, now that the clients see that the "piracy" isn't going to sink their ships they can get on with the job of making product and making money off it, and taking advantage of the new medium to make even more profit.

New media mean new opportunities for profit, and these opportunities are greater than the (largely illusory) "losses" from the unauthorized copying they enable. This was shown with piano rolls, wax tube recordings, disk recordings, radio broadcasting, and tape recordings.

Now it has been shown with digital recordings and network distribution. But it's sufficiently counter-intuitive to The Suits that they have to learn it fresh every time.